Dealing With Injury: How to Turn a Curse Into A Blessing

As you would expect I get a lot of emails from people about their
vertical jump training and sadly one of the more common themes is
questions from people who have injured themselves. Injuries are
unfortunately an all too common reality for most hard training athletes,
especially those involved in the high impact, highly intense pursuit of
a big vertical jump.

Injuries Suck!

Vertical jump trainingIS hard on the body. It IS
hard on the joints, and let's face it, doing the little things to help
prevent injuries like a proper warm up and cool down, as well as other
preventative measures such as stretching, foam rolling, icing etc are
usually the first things people skip over when life gets short of time.

All in all, unless you are very lucky, pretty resilient, (or happen to be using the best vertical jump program
that modifies your training loads and frequency according to your
overall workload - thus drastically minimizing your chances of getting
an injury), there is a good chance you will wind up with some sort of
injury at some point in time.

Now generally speaking there are really only two types of injuries
you can sustain. There is the acute injury which is when a specific
incident occurs to create an immediate or near immediate form of trauma.
This type of injury includes things like sprained ligaments when you
land awkwardly, or broken bones when you fall off your bike.

Then there are the other types of injuries that tend to creep up on
you. These are often described as overuse injuries. This includes
things like Jumpers Knee or stress fractures which tend to build up over
time.

To add to the confusion it isn't always as clear cut as to what sort
of injury you have. For example you may have a minor foot injury
that isn't too painful but in small ways is changing the way you are
landing as you run and jump. Over time this might cause your tendons and
ligaments in your knee to become stressed trying to compensate and all
of a sudden for no obvious reason you tear an ACL. In an instance like
this the foot was the initial overuse problem, but ultimately it
manifested into something more acute.

A good example of this type of thing is former NBA MVP Derrick Rose's torn ACL being a result of his battles with turf toe during that season. There was a lot of speculation that the turf toe he battled may have made his knee far more
susceptible to the tear that in hind site completely changed his career trajectory.

Derrick Rose went from this....

....to this.

What You Can Do About It

So what is the point of all of this talk of injuries? Well I have
been thinking recently about how you can choose to respond to an injury.
In many ways it is like the flight or fight response. You can either
view an injury as an excuse to slack off, or you can view it as an
opportunity to work on neglected areas. Obviously the approach I prefer
is to work on the neglected areas.

This is particularly important for athletes with overuse injuries
like jumpers knee. If you don't address the underlying issues then even
though the injury may heal, the problem hasn't really gone away and
often you will be setting yourself up for a recurrence.

So what sorts of things can you do when you are injured? The most
important thing to take into consideration is to choose things that
don't re-aggravate your current injury and prolong the healing process.
If it hurts- stop.

The second thing to consider would be whether or not your injury was
caused by something specific that needs to be addressed. If you do get
some sort of injury, then assuming it isn't catastrophically bad, these
are probably the best sort to get. The reason being that taking the
necessary steps to correcting the injury will quite often help you
become a better athlete due to the training you can do while you
recover.

As an example I have recently had a recurrence of my jumper's knee
that was in this instance caused by a glute strength and activation
issue. Exercises that previously were no problem such as front squats,
were all of a sudden starting to cause my left knee to flare up quite
painfully. After determining what the problem was I have been spending
the last 6 weeks focusing on deadlifts, glute ham raises, and sled and
hill sprints.

This extra emphasis on posterior chain work is something I hadn't
done for a while and as I can feel the inflammation and tightness
starting to subside, I have also rather excitedly become aware that I
have made some pretty noticeable improvements in my running speed and
acceleration.

Hill Sprinting: Easy on the knees, good for the posterior chain

Spending time focusing on neglected areas isn't limited to strength
work either, quite often it is flexibility and mobility, particularly
around the quads, glutes, and hip flexors that has created the problem
so your down time might be just as well spent loosening yourself out a
little and freeing up your capacity to move without restraint.

If you have an injury that isn't as specific as that, the next rule I
would follow would be to do the things that provide the most bang for
your buck. For example if you have a sore ankle you might think that you
can do some leg extensions for your quads, but quite often, depending
on how sore the ankle actually is, you can still do squats and
deadlifts, albeit with a lighter load than usual. In this case both the
leg extensions and the squat or deadlift can be done pain free, but it
is the squats or deadlifts that provide the most bang for your buck.

As a side note to this point - you should actually be doing the
exercises that provide the most bang for your buck even if you aren't
injured - but it is worth reiterating here because it genuinely
surprises me how much people want to wimp out whenever they can.

Finally the last method of injury based training is what I call the
'do whatever the hell you can' approach. This is something that would
normally only need to be applied to someone with a pretty serious
injury. For example if you have a broken leg that is in a plaster cast
it is going to be hard to do any leg training.

So what do you do? Lots of upper body work, core work, lower back
strengthening, and of course flexibility work to help align everything
correctly so that when the leg comes out of the cast you can resume your
training in a more prepared state and you can minimize the loss of
performance capabilities while you are recovering.

Want To Add 6-12 Inches To Your Vertical Jump

While there are many reasons people get injured the most annoying has to be the avoidable one. I talk of course about bad jump training programming. As mentioned at the start of this article jump training is hard on the body and you really do need to factor in things such as training readiness, current workload, etc.

Unfortunately most jump training programs are nothing but cookie cutter pre-written garbage that doesn't allow for the needs of the individual athlete and as such won't produce the same kinds of training results as a customised program, but are also subjecting you to an increased chance of injury.

If you are serious about increasing you vertical jump than do it the smart way and get a custom jump training program written for you. Verticaljumping.com offers a jump coaching service that does just that for only $10. This is significantly cheaper than most commercially available jump programs and is going to get you better results.

Conclusion

Most people who train hard and compete hard at their sport will
encounter an injury sooner or later. It is in many ways almost a
by-product of pushing yourself to the limits. How you deal with them can
often be the difference between having a long and fulfilling athletic
career, and being an also ran.

If you are dealing with an injury setback right now, sure it might be
a temporary roadblock to achieving to your current goals, but if you
approach it right, it can also be a useful wake up call that helps spur
you on the greater heights.